In many commercial and testing applications, it is desirable to feed a coaxial signal line through to printed circuit board circuitry. High quality circuit interconnections, cable to PCB, have been difficult to achieve because of the combination of stringent electrical signal performance requirements with relatively limited space constraints. Such a connector or header must be miniature in scale, but must meet stringent performance requirements resulting from high speed or high frequency data transmission.
Presently, most coaxial cable connectors or headers designed for attaching a miniature cable to a PCB are assembled from many parts, which, owing to their size and complexity, may be difficult to make, complicated to assemble, or expensive, particularly for right-angled headers. Typical of right-angled headers for attaching a single coaxial cable to a PCB is that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,360,244, wherein the header comprises two mateable right-angled units, one of which is a right-angled metal shell containing therein insulation with a right-angled pin centered within the insulation and the signal contact pin projecting from the surface to be attached to the PCB along with a grounding contact pin affixed to or in contact with the metal shell. A similar right-angled shielded coaxial contact, mateable with the above right-angled unit, is attached to the coaxial electrical cable desired to be attached thereby to the PCB. A somewhat similar triaxial right-angled header for attaching a triaxial cable directly to a PCB is described by U.S. Pat. No. 4,741,703.
A connector for shielded flat coaxial cable made up from a multiplicity of coaxial cables is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,639,053, wherein a connector housing has arranged within it an insulating body, a grounding sheet metal spring for contacting the shields of the individual cables comprising the flat cable, and grounding metal layers along interior walls of the housing to form direct contact with the shield surrounding the flat cable as a whole.